


Fragile Beginnings

by doctor__idiot



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 8x19 "Taxi Driver", Episode Related, Everyone is an idiot, Fix-It, M/M, Missing Scene, Realizations, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 22:04:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9789107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctor__idiot/pseuds/doctor__idiot
Summary: “Something happened between you two, didn’t it?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was having a lot of Benny feels and this is what came of it. I haven't watched season 8 in a while, so this might not make sense timeline-wise.
> 
> Disclaimer: Nothing's mine, except the typos. Unbeta'd as always.

“Are you okay?”

It was a stupid question, plainly unnecessary, but the silence was worse and Sam had to to say something.

“Yes,” was Dean’s curt answer. As it always was.

Sam didn’t argue. What he said was, “Benny’s an idiot.”

“What?” That got Dean’s attention, to say the least. His eyes narrowed on Sam and the glowering stare might have made a lesser man run for the hills. The whole thing with the day’s worth of stubble, soil caked on his clothes, and the gun still tucked into the back of his waistband was very convincing, but it couldn’t fool Sam. To Sam, Dean always just looked like his big brother.

“I said —”

“I know what you said. I wanna know what you meant.”

“Exactly what I said. You’ve been through god knows what kind of fucked-up shit. That kind of fucked-up shit forges bonds. Strong ones. And I can see that you miss him.”

Predictably, Dean scoffed. He turned away from Sam, taking off his his dirt-coated jacket, and placed his gun on the table, unstrapping the knife from his boot. “Why do you care? You hate him.”

“I don’t hate him. I don’t like that he’s a vampire. But,” Sam looked down at the inside of his arm, rubbing along the cut he had made with the knife to release Bobby’s soul, the same cut he would have made for Benny if he had come back with them, “I actually kind of feel like I know him a little better know. I respect what he did for you. Or rather, for me.”

Dean glanced at him over his shoulder as he toed off his shoes. “For you?”

“He saved you, didn’t he? And today, he saved me and Bobby, too.”

Dean froze for a moment, the line of his shoulders visibly tense even from where Sam was sitting. “Yeah,” Dean eventually said, relaxing a fraction before turning back around. “He does that.”

It didn’t sound like Dean was particularly interested in continuing the conversation but Sam was itching to know, itching to find out if he was right about what he _thought_ he’d seen in Benny’s eyes before he threw himself fangs-first into the attack.

“Something happened between you two, didn’t it?”

Dean went still again. Rigid. If Sam hadn’t been looking for the slight tremor in his brother’s fingers, he would have missed it. 

“In Purgatory,” he prompted further, “Something happened.”

“Lots of somethings happened in Purgatory,” Dean answered gruffly, avoiding Sam’s eyes. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that I was wrong.”

That finally made Dean look up, forehead furrowed. “What?”

Sam couldn’t help the small smile that formed in the corner of his mouth in the face of his brother’s confusion. “Benny isn’t the idiot. You are.”

“ _Excuse me_? Look, Sam, if all you wanna do is insult me, then I’m done here. I’m gonna have a shower.”

Sam stopped Dean halfway to the bathroom by getting up from his chair and placing a hand on his brother’s arm, fingers curling around Dean’s wrist.

“I don’t want to insult you,” Sam said. Dean’s arched eyebrow obviously disagreed with that statement.

Sam turned his eyes down to the place where he was holding Dean gently. He turned his hand over, Dean’s wrist along with it and Dean let him, his arm slack in Sam’s grip. Sam’s fingers were able to wrap entirely around Dean’s wrist and Sam didn’t know why that struck him so hard but it did.

“I just,” he began, clearing his throat. “I just want to know.”

He looked back up, finding that Dean’s eyes had softened, his face had smoothed out. There was even a tiny curve to his mouth and Sam breathed a sigh of relief.

Dean’s shrug tugged at Sam’s hand but Sam didn’t let go and Dean didn’t pull away. “I don’t know what to tell you, Sammy. Yes, there was something, okay? We … It’s Purgatory, man. It’s lonely. And scary. And it … forges bonds, or whatever.”

Sam could see Dean shutting down again, just a little, fraction by fraction, and it was the last thing he wanted. “You don’t have to justify it. Not to me, not to anyone. Not to _yourself_ ,” he added because he knew Dean all too well.

Apparently that thought had crossed Dean’s mind once or twice already because all he did was shrug again. Then he gave a little laugh, “Right,” he said, “I forgot. You’d know a little something about that, wouldn’t you?”

Sam wasn’t sure how the dig was intended, wasn’t sure whether to be offended or to apologize. “I… I was never in love with Amelia,” he settled on eventually because it was true.

Dean looked up at him. “You think I was in love with Benny?”

Now it was Sam’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know. Were you?”

“No.” No hesitation, no denial, no embarrassment. Just ‘no’. Sam wasn’t sure why a huge wave of relief washed through him at hearing that word.

There was something else colouring it, a strange sense of … amusement. As if the sheer idea was ridiculous.

“Is that why you…” Sam searched for something other than ‘broke up with him’ but he came up empty. “…broke up with him?” It sounded trite to his own ears, not at all fitting to describe what Dean and Benny had shared. More than anything, Sam understood. The tight feeling in his chest wouldn’t go away any time soon, but he understood.

Dean shook his head, not commenting on Sam’s choice of words. “I don’t know. No. It … Hell, Sam, it would never have worked. He’s a vampire, for god’s sake. There was something between us down there but as soon as we got topside … there wasn’t. I don’t know how to explain it. I came back, I got my life back, I found you, and there just … wasn’t room.”

Sam contemplated Dean’s pinched expression for a moment. “Yeah. You’re definitely the idiot.”

“Why are you berating me for this?” Dean’s voice dropped half an octave, as it always did when he was about to get angry. He tugged at Sam’s grip, trying to reclaim his wrist.

“Honestly?” 

Dean rolled his eyes. “No, Sam, lie to me.”

“I feel bad,” Sam admitted, “I misjudged Benny and there’s no way now that I can thank him for sacrificing himself.”

Dean’s face fell so suddenly it was almost comical. “Wait, he’s —“

“I don’t know.”

Dean nodded jerkily, turning his eyes to the floor. A moment of silence stretched between them until he gave a watery laugh. “It’s okay,” he said, “It’s good. In a way.”

“How?”

“He never wanted to be here, never managed to fit in. I thought he wanted out. But maybe… Maybe it was me who wanted him out.” His eyes were fixed on a spot on the floor. Until Sam realized that, no, not on the floor. Dean was staring at Sam’s fingers around his own wrist and Sam suddenly became brutally aware of the contact.

They were standing too close, closer than was comfortable, but neither of them pulled back.

“For what it’s worth,” Sam said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

Dean nodded, somewhat shakily, and finally looked back up at him. “I know you are. Me too.”

They apologized to each other so frequently these days, it wasn’t always clear what they were apologizing for. There was never an explanation.

It took a long time of just standing there, still much too close, until one of them spoke again.

“Why did you stay with Amelia if you didn’t love her?” Dean finally asked, voice hoarse, and weirdly enough, it drew Sam’s gaze to Dean’s throat, to the curve of his Adam’s apple.

For once, it was an easy question to answer. “There was no one else.”

“And you hit a dog,” Dean said with audible amusement, relaxing Sam, who hadn’t noticed how tense his shoulders had become.

“Yeah,” he laughed, “I hit a dog.”

Dean chuckled along with him, then gently tugged at his wrist again. “You gonna let me go so I can take a shower?”

If Sam knew one thing, he knew that he definitely did not want to do that. 

“In a minute,” he said.

“Weirdo.”

Sam could live with that. “Tell me one more thing.” 

Dean’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

“The reason it wouldn’t have worked between you and Benny isn’t because he’s a vampire, is it?”

Sam knew that he had hit a nerve when Dean’s face shut and he shifted his weight. “I told you, Sam. What happens in Purgatory stays in Purgatory. Why can’t you let this go?”

Excellent question. “Yeah, I heard you. But I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have fought harder to stay topside if there had been a chance for the two of you.”

“You make it sound like a bad romance novel,” Dean huffed, “The Vampire and the Hunter.”

“I could see it in his eyes, Dean. He _knew_ —“

“Yeah, Sam,” Dean interrupted, voice strained, his body strung-tight, “He knew. He knew the same way Lisa knew. He knew that as soon as you’re back in the picture, there’s no way…”

Sam swallowed against the blockage forming in his throat. Dean looked like he was in physical pain and his hand, still trapped in Sam’s hold, flexed and curled into a fist. 

“I don’t…”

Dean snorted derisively. “Now look who’s the idiot.”

Through all the confusion, Sam wanted nothing more than to take away the pain Dean was feeling. He didn’t know how but his entire body vibrated with the desire, with the need to figure out what Dean was saying, to find a way to make it better.

Dean’s eyes had always been too expressive for his own good, betraying him even when his face was closed off, and they were shining now, shining with something Sam thought he had caught glimpses of before but never been able to place it.

He opened his mouth to say something but then closed it again. He trailed his eyes down Dean’s naked forearm to his own fingers, encircling the entirety of Dean’s wrist, could feel the bones and sinews shifting with each breath Dean took, and he tightened his grip on instinct and pulled. 

Not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to make Dean gasp in surprise and take an unsteady step toward him. There was practically no space between them anymore now and Dean was shaking slightly, eyes bravely trained on Sam’s face, and Sam thought he finally understood. It was like something cracking open, sun breaking though clouds after a rainy day.

Dean was right. Sam had been the idiot all along.


End file.
